Jyotika Virdi, The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History (Rutgers UP)

Readings on Reserve in Main Library

Course Requirements:

Essays: Four short essays (3-5 pp. each) that synthesize your thoughts on the films, readings, and class discussions: the format for the essays will be discussed in class. Ideally, each essay should include discussion of at least two of the required films for the course and should refer to some of the relevant assigned readings. Each essay will be worth 15% of your total grade. Essays are due in class on the following dates:

Tuesday, September 21 (Week 5)

Tuesday, October 12 (Week 8)

Tuesday, November 2 (Week 11)

Thursday, December 2 (Week 14)

Exam: There will be a final exam at the scheduled time (12:00 p.m., Thursday, December 16th) worth roughly 30% of your final grade.

Class Participation: while some portions of this class will be devoted to lectures, most of the class will involve active discussion. You should always come to class prepared to discuss the material relevant to each session. Note also that attendance at Monday night screenings is a required component of the course. Attendance will be taken periodically, and repeated, unexcused absence will seriously affect your final grade. Class participation will count for roughly 10% of the final grade.

Graduate Students: graduate students taking the class should expect to do additional reading and perhaps viewing for the course; a number of times during the semester we will plan additional meetings in addition to class sessions to discuss texts and topics appropriate for graduate-level research on Hindi cinema; course requirements will also be adjusted appropriately.

WEEK 6: September 27, 28, 30: The Courtesan Film

Screening: Umrao Jaan (Muzaffar Ali, 1981, 145m)

Required Readings:

Sumita Chakravarty, selection from Chapter 8, “Woman and the Burden of Postcoloniality: The Courtesan Film Genre,” in National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema 1947-1987 (Austin: U of Texas P, 1993): 269-293. [coursepack]

Veena Talwar Oldenberg, “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow,” in Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, ed. Douglas Haynes and Gyan Prakash (Berkeley: U of California P, 1992): 23-61. [coursepack]

Additional Resources:

Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, Umrao Jan Ada, trans. Khushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini (Hyderabad: Disha Books, 1993) [note: this translation is preferable to the later version by David Matthews, 1996]

Vinay Lal, “The Impossibility of the Outsider in the Modern Hindi Film,” in The Secret Politics of Our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian Popular Cinema, ed. Ashis Nandy. (London: Zed Books, 1998): 228-259.

WEEK 11: November 1, 2, 4: The Masala Film

Screening: Amar, Akbar, Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977, 174m)

Required Readings:

Rosie Thomas, “Melodrama and the Negotiation of Morality in Mainstream Hindi Film,” in Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World. Ed. Carol A. Breckenridge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995): 157-182.